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My name is Chris or Shred for short.  I’m in my mid-thirties and I love beer.  It’s my hope that fellow beer-lovers, aspiring home brewers and anyone with some time to waste will join me in my new adventures in home brewing.

 

You’ll see a number of edits throughout my various articles.  I wanted to leave my original misconceptions/misunderstandings intact to demonstrate, that while I consider myself pretty well-educated at this point, there is a lot to learn and I don’t want others to be discouraged and to think they need to know everything right away.  These edits came with time and experience.

 

Edit (January, 2014) – Homebrewing is an amazing creative outlet as well as a deliciously infectionious disease.  In 1 year I’ve gone from brewing by myself on the kitchen stove to having 6-8 friends over every Thursday for a crazy brew night in the garage with burners, mash tuns, kettles and beer everywhere.  To date we’ve collectively brewed several hundred gallons of beer.  

 

Federal law says you are allowed 100 gallons of home-brewed beer per year per adult in the household up to a maximum of 200 gallons.  If you are a law enforcement agent, I feel I should clarify… not all of the several hundred gallons produced reside at this household… maybe.

 

This blog will serve as a reflection of things I learn as well as my recipe journal.

Our journey begins now:

 

Christmas Morning 2012… a large gift is placed before me.

 

At the lady friend’s guidance I begin tearing into the colorful, snowman paper.  A plain-ish white box is extracted.  I’d actually forgotten that I’d added it to my wishlist.  Now out of it’s papery, festive prison I say hello to my new friend, the True Brew Gold Complete Beer Equipment Kit (K6).

The kit came highly reviewed on Amazon so I figured, being a complete novice (I have no idea what I’m doing), my best bet is to trust the reviews.  According to the package, the kit contains a whole bunch of gizmos I’ve never heard of. (True Brew Handbook & Kit Instructions, 7.8 Gallon Fermenting Bucket, 1 Lid Drilled & Grommet, True Brew Rack & Fill kit, 6 Gallon Glass Carboy, Fermometer Fermentation Thermometer, Small Buon Vino Drilled Stopper, Hydrometer, Bottling Spigot, Emily Double Lever Capper, 3 Piece Airlock, Bottle Brush, C-Brite Sanitizer 8-Pack).

EDIT – I was not overly thrilled with this kit or the company selling it for a number of reasons you’ll be able to read in my not-to-distant-future posts.  Take a look at my “Buy Equipment” page (coming soon) for some recommended kits offered by my sponsors.

True Brew Gold Home Beer Brewing Kit (K6)
True Brew kits are made by BSG HandCraft, formerly Crosby & Baker:
(I think they may be out of business now)

 

A second, smaller package was then opened.  “The Complete Joy of Home Brewing” by Charlie Papazian (buy it here).  The book contains roughly 8x as many pages as an entire encyclopedia set and I’ve got dinner to cook at my parents’ house, so becoming a leading expert on home brewing will have to wait another day.

Complete Joy of Home Brewing Beer Book
This guy is more than just a beer nut. He’s a Nuclear Engineer & President of the Brewers Assoc!

 

What little I was able to read from the tiny manual included in the kit tells me it’s gonna be at least a month before I taste my first home brew.  I’m also gonna need to consult someone with a bit more experience for techniques, identifying equipment and best practices.

 

A trip to the local brew supply store is in order tomorrow.